Pandemic Diaries: The inside story of Britain’s battle against Covid

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It would also, he implied, take the heat out of the “briefed/leaked” news that ministers were looking to make “execs/high net worth individuals” exempt from travel quarantine. By the time the self-isolation requirement was removed on Feb 24 2022, 26.4 million people had been told to self-isolate in England.

At points during the pandemic, more than 600,000 people a week who had been in close proximity to a Covid case were told to quarantine for 10 days. Barbara Castle (second from right) campaigns for equal pay in 1954. Photograph: Terry Fincher/Getty Images Edwina Currie with John Major at the launch of the Conservative European manifesto in 1994. Photograph: PASwire has the same talent for indiscretion and waspishness that Channon did. Dominic Cummings looks like an “odd amoeba you find in jars in school science labs”; Gavin Williamson is dismissed as having all the sophistication and intellect of a seven-year-old.

Standing in my kitchen in Suffolk after a quiet New Year’s Eve, I scanned my newspaper for clues as to what might be lurking around the corner.’ Prince Philip has died. A moment of great solemnity. Thank God I knew nothing of the Downing Street party to celebrate his departure. I call Winston Churchill to let him know I think Dunkirk will be fine. No reply. But I don’t do this for the thanks. Nadine Dorries texts to say she feels she is being marginalised. There is no easy way of letting her know that is because she isn’t very able. But somehow I find a way. We are a team. Though every team needs a leader.Since then, accelerated by the “professionalisation” of politics during the early 20th century, the pressure to hold politicians to account has grown significantly. As Egerton writes, since the post-war period it has been the norm for politicians to “publish an account of their leadership”. Putting any personal political opinions aside I think anyone would find this interesting (even if a few sections might leave you shouting at your phone in anger when he criticises a person/party/workforce/union... that you like). An initial – heavily redacted – version of former Southend MP Channon’s journals was published in 1967 (Nancy Mitford called them “vile and spiteful and silly”). The latest incarnation, edited by the journalist and broadcaster Simon Heffer, is far racier and more gossipy than the original.